Monsters vs. Aliens — $58.2 million
Basically Pixar or DreamWorks or whoever could basically computer-animate a dog blinking for ninety minutes and kids and their "will there be inside adult jokes for us??" parents will line up, slobbering. (Though, they couldn't just computer-animate an outerspace magic Freddie Prinze lizard blinking for ninety minutes and expect lots of money. That, apparently, doesn't work.) This huge debut beat Watchmen to become the biggest of the year. Another sad indignity waged upon the superhero movie by, no doubt, its giant squid enemy.

The Haunting in Connecticut — $23 million
Another big bow. The ghosties and ghouls feature, starring Virginia Madsen (the scariest/saddest thing of all), racked up a nice $8,422 per-screen average and would have handily won the weekend had there not been some damn animated thing raging through the cineplexes too. Cheapo horror still reliably turns a buck these days. Lionsgate or Dimension or Dark Castle or whoever ought to film a cat blinking for ninety minutes while some gurgling black J-Horror ghost lurches toward them. It'd be boffo!

I Love You, Man — $12.6 million
Hardly dropping at all (29%) in its second weekend, the Paul Rudd comedy ought to ride strong word-of-mouth to sleeper success. Which is good for all of us because Rudd and costar Jason Segel are very funny men and references to dogs named Anwar Sadat really should be encouraged. That Judd Apatow technically had nothing to do with this picture is heartening—it proves funneez can be made without the bearded svengali's involvement.

Duplicity — $7.6 million
Two weeks out, and only $25 million grossed. What exactly went wrong with this caper flick? Had Julia Roberts been out of the game too long? How much does America really want Clive Owen? Was that alienatingly smug trailer—"Admit it... you don't trust me either." Ugh—just too much? Whatever the reason, the movie's a stumble for all involved, including writer/director Tony Gilroy, who had a chance to prove some commercial appeal after his critically-acclaimed but too-somber-for-popcorn Michael Clayton. Ah well. Better luck next time, zillionaires.

Watchmen — $2.8 million
Four weeks out, and just over $100 million hauled in. The flick is playing decently overseas, but the whole muddle is still an unqualified disappointment. How much does America really want Malin Ackerman? Is it because of that moment in the trailer when the giant blue penis asks the owl sexmobile if it doesn't, in fact, trust it either? The world may never know. All it tells me, really, is that this might be a bad time for my dark, painstakingly-faithful adaption of Archie: Pals 'n' Gals #118, in which the gang is super into ventriloquism and Reggie and Archie compete to see who can throw their voice the best. Ackerman is already on board to play Betty, and Owen was set to be Reggie. Offer's still out to Obama for Chuck. So, we'll see.

1) Race to Witch Mountain — $25 million
Dwayne Johnson continues to prosper since he murdered The Rock on that cliff that rainy night a few years ago. The film scored well in all quadrants, and though it's about little blonde outerspace witch children, 18% of the adult audience who saw the damn thing weren't even with kids. Chillingly, 7% of that 18% left the theater with children.

2) Watchmen — $18.1 million
As reported earlier, the dark comic book meditation on doom, destruction, and awkward sex in flying owl cars got a stiff rodgering from the alien witch children. It fell a precipitous 67% from last weekend domestically, and 50% internationally. That equals bad word of mouth. Luckily, sorta, for Warner Bros., this wasn't exactly franchise potential. So only one dream was killed. One big, throbbing, blue wang of a wish, dispatched handily by a rival hero, a kiddie-loving former wrestler.

3) Last House on the Left — $14.7 million
A mysterious and dangerous-seeming crowd sought refuge in 2,401 theaters across the country, only to be brutally murdered by Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter—beating people to death with the last muttony chunks of their own careers—and the sad realization that this movie probably shouldn't have been made back in the day by Wes Craven, let alone remade and stylized and re-plotted so the daughter doesn't die. Pah. That said, though, it's yet another strong showing for a graphic horror movie.

4) - 7) Taken, Madea Goes to Jail, Slumdog Millionaire, & Paul Blart — More millions
These four mid-to-late winter powerhouses continue to rage on. Everyone but Madea has earned close-to or over $130 million domestically, while that Tyler Perry flick has racked up a healthy $83 million. Already Fox, Lionsgate, and Sony are in talks to create a superhero franchise in which a grizzled ex-CIA man, a sassy gun-toting old black lady, several impoverished but plucky Indian children, and a fat man on a Segway team up to fight villains and blow various shits up. Alan Moore has happily agreed to write the first screenplay. Ang Lee will direct.

10) Miss March — $2.4 million
A movie from two of the guys who do Whitest Kids U Know did just aight on 1,742 screens. The movie probably cost like four bucks to make, but it has tits and stuff, so maybe could have been slightly stronger counter-programming to the reasonably family-friendly alien witch fable. It's the second-most successful Hugh Hefner project in the past year, after The House Bunny racked up $14.5 million back in August. Keep an eye out for his next picture, a remake of Harold and Maude in which the genders are switched and there are a lot more boobs. Like, a lot more.

The graphic-novel-based movie saw its U.S. box office receipts fall 67 percent, while overseas the film fell 50 percent. So far, it has grossed $134 million in 10 days. It cost $200 million to make and market.

Box office normally falls in a film's second week, but Variety cites figures showing this tumble is especially bad.

Sorry, nerds: Warner Brothers might have made a hash of your beloved comic-book masterpiece, but the only lesson most studio heads will glean from its failure is that you're a finicky bunch who can't be trusted to reliably carry smash hits. All movies will be made for chuckling jocks and vapid celebutante-wannabes for the rest of the depression.

(Image via alt.nerd.obsessive)

It'll take some sorting through to figure out exactly what went wrong with Watchmen, but we suspect it was a case of a tower being built too tall and collapsing in on itself. Not that many people were Watchmen fans, but the economy-plagued country needed something big and flashy and money-making to wave around as a symbol that we can still carry on and some of us can still get rich. A few months ago that movie was Twilight, which performed as hoped. But that was a wayyy smaller movie, and the books were read by millions of people, just recently. Watchmen is 25 years old and is far more niche than chaste vampire love teen novels. To pin the coming blockbuster season's early hopes on that top-heavy of a movie was reckless optimism.

One of the film's screenwriters, David Hayter, has sent an open letter to the science fiction/superhero/furtively masturbating to a well-worn photo of Deana Troi fan community, pleading with them to come and see the movie a second (or third! or fourth! or infinity!) time, because if this movie doesn't do a strong second weekend, then no movie like it will ever be made again. It's all or nothing:

If the film made you think. Or argue with your friends. If it inspired a debate about the nature of man, or vigilante justice, or the horror of Nixon abolishing term limits. If you laughed at Bowie hanging with Adrian at Studio 54, or the Silhouette kissing that nurse.

Please go see the movie again next weekend.

You have to understand, everyone is watching to see how the film will do in its second week. If you care about movies that have a brain, or balls, (and this film's got both, literally), or true adaptations — And if you're thinking of seeing it again anyway, please go back this weekend, Friday or Saturday night. Demonstrate the power of the fans, because it'll help let the people who pay for these movies know what we'd like to see. Because if it drops off the radar after the first weekend, they will never allow a film like this to be made again.

So, oh dear, that is sad! You owe it to all of comic books and superheroes and kickass movies, everyone! Trouble is, the pervading speculation is that pretty much everyone who wanted to see the movie already has, and that its bouquet of bad reviews won't encourage the timid or uninitiated to take a chance an unknown kid.

In the end I guess the question is, do you owe the filmmakers, dear nerds? They slavishly adapted this heady, impenetrable graphic novel just for you, enraging a crazy bearded man in the process, and all you can muster for them is $92 million dollars worldwide to date? For shame. They spent some 200 clams just serving the damn thing to you on a real-life vintage platter from alternate history 1985. So, c'mon. Do these millionaires a favor. Pony up the $11 a few more times, and let these nice, innocent Hollywood people creak on with their little cottage industry for another day.

1) Watchmen — $55.7 million
It was supposed to be the biggest movie ever—or at least beat director Zack Snyder's $70 million 300 bow—because it's dark and cool and edgy and is about nihilistic politics and tits and stuff. Instead it's just one of the biggest R-rated, March weekend openings ever. Surely Watchmen's lower-than-hoped first dance is a big disappointment for Warner Brothers, which spent a hell of a lot of money and squawking time on the grim, turgid superhero alternate history. Word of mouth seemed to deal it a hearty blow, as it slipped from $25 million on Friday, to $19 on Saturday, to a sad little $11 on Sunday. Doesn't bode well for the coming weekends.

2) Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail — $8.8 million
The old girl just keeps rampaging on, waving her pistol at Rudy Huxtable. With a cool $76.5 million banked so far, Tyler Perry might be one step closer to buying those business cards that have his name on them and everything that he's been saving up for. It also spells good things for upcoming projects like Madea Takes Manhattan, Follow That Madea!, and the stirring Madea at Aulis.

3) Taken — $7.5 million
The old guy just keeps rampaging on, waving his pistol at Rudy Huxtable's Albanian cousin. Liam Neeson, proportionately, is a bigger badass than Patrick Wilson in an owl costume and Valerie Cherish's annoying Room & Bored costar. So, that's something.

5) Paul Blart: Mall Cop — $4.2 million
As the fat guy atop a Segway putters past the $133 million mark, I guess it should give us pause. What is it about the overweight rolling around on their bellies on shopping mall floors that inspires so much glee? I suppose it could be the site of a well-fed person basking in the glow of hallowed consumerism that gets us excited, nostalgic even, for some long lost era. Either that or we like bears doing tricks at the circus, so why wouldn't we like their shaved counterparts doing the same at the movies?

9) Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience — $2.8
Awww. After only two weeks out, the film sinks down to number 9. It's made a sad little $16 so far, not even half of what Miley Cyrus' concertina made in its first weekend. Does this spell the beginning of the end for our little Twizzler-limbed trio? Unfortunately, I don't think they'll go squealing chastely into that good night any time soon. Maybe they'll try to reinvent themselves for their ever-aging core audience as gritty, fuckfest aficionado rock and rollers. With new tracks like "Stop Ur Texting and Letz Get Sexing", "Sit On My Facebook", and "R U 4 86 4 EVA."

A.O. Scott at the New York Times think it's about time devotees of the dystopian tale grew the F up:

And the dramatic conflict revealed, at long last, in the film's climactic arguments is between a wholesale, idealistic approach to mass death and one that is more cynical and individualistic. This idea is sickening but also, finally, unpersuasive, because it is rooted in a view of human behavior that is fundamentally immature, self-pitying and sentimental. Perhaps there is some pleasure to be found in regressing into this belligerent, adolescent state of mind. But maybe it's better to grow up.

Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly, in a B- review, found the material a bit dated:

A no-future nihilism bled from the very grain of Moore and Gibbons' pop vision of the 20th century. But that's a real problem for the movie, since the Cold War nuclear fears of the '80s never did come to pass. Watchmen isn't boring, but as a fragmented sci-fi doomsday noir, it remains as detached from the viewer as it is from the zeitgeist.

A bored Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, wonders if anyone should have bothered in the first place:

And yet as this continues, for 162 minutes, the usual question arises: Has the film added anything? Which forces one to confront the book, after more than two decades, with a little more critical distance. For years, people have wondered if it is filmable. But the real issue is whether the novel is worth filming at all.

Ol' Kenny Turan at the Los Angeles Times finds value in the book, but not in the film:

To be fair, on the other hand, "Watchmen's" plot is in no way chopped liver, and reverentially sticking to the source material, as the first "Harry Potter" films did, is the only thing that gives this film what watchability it has. Even if you haven't read the book, even if your first exposure to the story is in this denatured form, you can at least sense the power of the original, and that's what will stay in your mind, not what's on the screen.

Richard Corliss at Time lurves the opening sequence, which provides backstory to the tune of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a Changin'". He doesn't like all that much else:

Maybe there's no way the rest of the film could match this opening, and for sure it doesn't. Snyder spends much of the movie's 2 hours and 40 minutes on the splatter of crushed limbs, the chatter of Strangelovean science fiction and the nattering of the obligatory romance. He also encourages a little festival of tone-deaf acting. Yet Watchmen has moments of greatness. It proves again that the action movie is where the best young Hollywood brains have gone to bring flesh to their fantasies.

Devin Gordon at Newsweek finds moments of the supposedly-heavy-duty film quite silly:

Snyder's attention wanders when it comes to meat-and-potatoes storytelling, perhaps because he's never really had to tell one before. He draws performances that range from sublime (Jackie Earle Haley as a bitter antihero named Rorschach) to ridiculous (Malin Akerman, who has a sweet onscreen disposition but is nonetheless the Jar Jar Binks of "Watchmen"). ... Snyder also makes gross errors in tone, giving his flimsy villain a rinky-dink costume with nipples on its chest plate. He has said in interviews that he did it on purpose to preserve Moore's sendup of superhero self-seriousness, but that kind of subtlety isn't Snyder's strong suit, which is obvious the first time we see Dr. Manhattan wander across the screen in the nude, with his giant blue junk flapping in the apocalyptic breeze-another misguided sop to the novel and its R-rated sensibility.

Peter Travers at Rolling Stone, as always, boils it down to its silver-lining essence:

At its best, Snyder's movie gets at the symbolism of that smile button splashed with blood on the first Watchmen cover.

So not so good from some of the bigger critics in the land. But does it matter? Probably not initially. The film opened big in midnight screenings early this morning, and it ought to outpace Snyder's previous blockbuster effort, 300. But on the plane of pride and prestige and long-term, Titanic style longevity? Yes it does matter. In the new superhero world of a critically-adored smash like the The Dark Knight—which had a raft of strong reviews behind it (plus far more recognizable characters and a famous death) that helped it juggernaut all through the summer—people are beginning to expect a little awardsy grit with their blood and explosions. Too bad Watchmen didn't quite get there. Many non-believers will probably be reluctant to fork over increasingly-harder-earned doughlars for a long, turgid movie that's just OK.

Once again, Batman foils another plot.

The London Times issued the first mainstream approbation after Tuesday's world premiere, suggesting that "as the first attempt to make a truly post-adolescent comic book movie, Watchmen is, literally, peerless." Neither critics from Variety nor The Hollywood Reporter seemed to disagree after viewing the film last night in LA. For what that was worth: At bigger issue, they wrote, is Watchmen's muddled mediocrity at best and stories "too absurd and acting too uneven to convince anyone," according to THR's Kirk Honeycutt. And by "anyone," the critic really does mean it, concluding, "Looks like we have the first real flop of 2009." Variety's Justin Chang was barely more optimistic about the long-awaited graphic novel adaptation:

[A]uds unfamiliar with Moore's brilliantly bleak, psychologically subversive fiction may get lost amid all the sinewy exposition and multiple flashbacks. After a victorious opening weekend, the pic's B.O. future looks promising but less certain.

"Whatever," studio partners Warner Bros. and Paramount might reply, reminding us that last week's distant fanboy screeching has crescendoed into a full-on market mating call. Harry Knowles led a generally rapturous second wave of praise ("I WATCHED THE FUCKING WATCHMEN AND FUCKING LOVED IT!" he bellowed this week on Ain't It Cool News), joined by admirers from CHUD, Hitfix and elsewhere. The studios' pricey, saturation marketing push nudges you from every direction — Web, print, TV, bus stops, even inside your coffee cup. Another classic case of review-proof comics fodder, a $125 million epic cut from Dark Knight cloth and tailored like one-size-fits-all robes for the geek choir. Right?

Not so fast. Full disclosure: We haven't seen Watchmen, and for all we know it's worthy of CHUD's comparisons to, ahem, The Godfather. But the ad hominem accolades overlook the bigger problem of two studios offering spring's biggest film as an R-rated, 161-minute, apocalyptic sex-and-violence fantasia. "[N]ot for the kids," acknowledges the Times, and possibly not even for the adults if leading critics — usually relied on to boost the prospects of indie and foreign fare — don't attest to director Zack Snyder's "art" when the films opens globally next week. So far, so bad.

Outside of Oscar season, it's an almost unprecedented scenario. The audience limitation is already beyond risky at these prices (particularly for a film that has no franchise future), but unofficially relying on critics to sell a blockbuster even its own source novelist vehemently disowns doesn't seem like much of a bet at all — it's like a prelude to a forfeiture. Of course Watchmen will open to $70 - $80 million domestically, and of course it will be profitable (most notably for the Satanic rights-claimants at Fox), and DVD perpetuity will be good to Snyder's even longer director's cut. But a sure thing it's not — and that's at best. Look out below.

Says our tipster, who just saw the film:

There is indeed shitloads of blue wang. And it's huge. In the comic book, it's very average, and uncut, but the film is completely the opposite. Massive and circumcised. Given that it's digital, was it Crudup or his agent that insisted on the impressive cut cock?

Perhaps Dr. Manhattan's foreskin is just one of the things restored in the uncut (ahem) version of Watchmen. Hollywood Outbreak has audio (captured here) of the director discussing filmdom's most notorious cerulean wang, and Snyder promises that in the eventual DVD, there is so much more big blue (in motion, even!) that even a magnum Watchmen condom couldn't contain it. Also, an initial foray into a 3-D version of the film got three WB executives pregnant; they are now required to turn their blue babies over to Fox.

• SUCH A FUSS [Hollywood Outbreak]

After one trailer where the radioactive member made a surprise appearance, all subsequent Watchmen footage has been frustratingly free of full-frontal. Thankfully, a Hollywood Elsewhere reader who managed to get into an early screening answered all of our burning questions (perhaps they wouldn't burn so much if we used protection?). In short, the amateur critic was disappointed at how inert and borderline campy the film was, blah blah blah, what about the wang:

"There were certainly no cheers at the end. About 80% of the audience rushed out of the theatre the second the credits began; minimal congregating outside. I did come across a group of three 20-something guys, holding their free give-away Watchmen posters, seemingly doing their best to talk themselves into liking the film.

"I almost don't want to spoil this for you, but there's a lot of blue penis in this film. Sadly, I'd say this was one of the few surprises and entertaining parts of the entire experience. It's not everyday that a mainstream Hollywood movie flashes blue Johnson!

This is true, since they deleted it from Frost/Nixon.

• That Whooshing Feeling [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Regardless of what you think of Silk Spectre's seemingly Xanax-dulled dialogue in this scene, few would deny that before Hayter came along to shepherd it to greatness, the script was "one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years." So listen, now, as the passionate fanboy Bard describes Fox as an "ethically challenged...rough group of people" —the Devil's minions, who easily possessed the power to lock the finished product away forever in Rupert Murdoch's Forbidden Goodies Vault, where the cryogenically frozen body of Darva Conger is tended by hunchbacked Fox paraphysicist David Faustino.

• WATCHMAN WRITER SLAMS FOX AS SATAN [hollywoodoutbreak.com]

We might have recommended that an initial extended look focus on fanboy favorites like Rorshach or Billy Crudup's blue wang, but instead (courtesy of the Sun) we have this mid-movie look at Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) getting her heroic mojo back while rescuing children from a burning building. More dangerous than the threat of fire are Akerman's wig, indifferent line readings, and still-ridiculous-no-matter-how-many-times-we-see-it costume, which combine to make the actress seem like the inevitable Halloween version of the character she's supposed to be making iconic. Hurm, indeed.

• Watchmen explode onto the big screen [The Sun]

Matt Selman insists he hasn't breached Warner Bros.' review embargo on the film, which opens March 6 and is review-proof anyway. But even so, where hormonal sister publication EW yelped with awe for months over Twilight, the Time blogger has claimed ownership of the geek vanguard with Monday's rather fulsome introspection:

I'm not allowed to talk details, but let's just say it is astounding how much of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel is in this movie. [...]

Sitting in that screening room and watching the visual world of the Watchmen movie unfold was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had. Not film experiences. Just EXPERIENCES. I don't think I realized how close I was to the original book until I saw such a loving, detail-rich, almost obsessive recreation of that universe. It had my heart pounding and head swimming. I barely slept that night. Someone took the most special personal thing of my adolescence and put it on a movie screen. That doesn't happen every day.

Thank God; "most special personal things" of our own adolescence would probably never even clear the ratings board.

• My Own Private 'Watchmen' [Time]

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Not that he'll have anything to do with it, of course. Despite notoriously changing the ending of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel, Snyder has long led the vocal charge against any franchising out from the equally devastating conclusion of his adaptation. He's not a total whore, after all; even he discovered limitations to his creative license, as elaborated in a cryptic, if amusing, weekend aside to the NYT:

We never did it, but we were going to do a limited release Bazooka bubble gum. I wanted Dave [Gibbons] to draw a comic book for me, and you had to collect all of them to make it make sense. I think it’s three panels per bubble gum, and you had to get 10 gums to make it all. And I was going to make a thing called Planet Rorschach. So you see this planet, and it’s covered with New York City. It’s like a planet of New York City. There’s no suburbs. There’s one giant Empire State Building, like Mount Olympus, in the middle of it. And hovering above the needle is [Dr.] Manhattan, blue, glowing.

But the planet’s going, “Hurm, hurm, hurm, hurm, hurm, hurm.” You can’t tell, it’s this big, deafening, “Hurm.” And as you get close, you go down into the city and the whole world is populated with Rorschachs. And they’re all bumping into each other, going, “Hurm, hurm, no compromise, hurm, hurm, Armageddon.” That’s basically it. So I was like, “Is that the movie you guys want to make?”

Probably not, though with a couple script polishes and a clever bit of Michael Jackson stunt-casting, a Rorschach spin-off may be just the kind of unlikely counterprogramming to win the Super Bowl 2011 weekend. Don't count it out.

• How Zack Snyder (Just Barely) Got ‘Watchmen’ to the Screen [NYT]

And no—your eyes are not deceiving you. A higher res copy of the top image reveals that those rice farmer extras are indeed genuflecting before Tron Guy, who's apparently picked up some fanboy side-work as a stand-in. Fret not, however, as all traces of his little Tron wang will be wiped away through the magic of CGI, and replaced later with the luminescent majesty of Billy Crudup.

• Exclusive: New Watchmen Production Pics [EmpireOnline]

The latter is the subject of a brand-new viral video, which re-weaves the American tapestry to include Crudup's big, blue superhero, Dr. Manhattan. How was he created? What powers does he possess, and how have they transformed the world as we know it? What was up with that terrible Dr. Manhattan cartoon on Saturday mornings? All those queries are answered and then some, but we have one complaint: the news report is full of censored wang. If there's anything the moviegoing audience needed to begin preparing for, it's some incredible, cerulean hero-steak. [Youtube]

Lawyers on both sides were scheduled to present their motion just minutes ago to Judge Gary Feess. THR reports:

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the deal is said to involve a sizable cash payment to Fox and a percentage of the film's boxoffice grosses; Fox will not be a co-distributor on the film, nor will it co-own the "Watchmen" property, but it will share in revenue derived from it. The studios released a joint statement last night.

For those keeping score at home, that makes Fox and Fanboys the winners, and Warners and producers Larry Gordon, Lloyd Levin et al. the losers. For nostalgic purposes, we offer you a timeline of the ugliest studio battle in recent history:

July 08: · The public gets its first look at Zack Snyder's vision with a trailer cobbled together with what footage was yet available. Billy Corgan's banshee wail will forever be the soundtrack to 4 million spontaneous fanboy erections.

Aug 08: · What was thought to be some petty inter-studio bickering is quickly upgraded to "the Cuban Missile Crisis of fanboydom." Fox does the unthinkable, and suggests they'd rather have an injunction than a payout. Gasp.

· A Galactic Fanboy Republic convenes for an emergency session to discuss next steps. They emerge exhausted 48 hours later with their resolution: complain loudly on their Galactic Fanboy blogs.

Sept 08: · A court date of January 6 is set. Legal ball-dropping producer Larry Gordon begins to crap pants.

Oct 08: · Snyder continues to keep his head down and focus of getting his movie completed, which means making sometimes unpopular decisions. Eg. Cutting the Giant Psychic Squid ending, and airbrushing off Dr. Manhattan's blue wang.

Dec 08: · Judge Feess issues his ruling. Fox, already delighted with the performance of Marley & Me, declares it "The Best Fox Christmas Ever," allowing all employees one phone call to a loved one on Christmas Day.

· Both sides beat their chests and make "hoo hoo hoo" sounds, with neither studio making any gestures towards reconciliation.

· Glimmers of blue-wang light: THR points out that under "copyright law, a rightsholder still has to show, among other things, that it will be 'irreparably harmed' absent an injunction." Watchmen's opening day could be safe!

· In a promising turn of events, both sides agree to forego a trial of favor of a January 20th mediation.

Jan 09: · Watchmen producer Lloyd Levin produces a stirring appeal to the heart in the form of an open letter, in which he recalls how Fox had considered the project "one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years." Fox countered that the same could easily have been said of Marley & Me, which of course was a proud, profitable property.

· We notice chilling similarities between Michael Jackson and Rorschach. Stare at the hole in the middle of his face: What do you see?

· Mentions of "productive" discussions through the weekend point towards a Silk Spectre-administered happy ending.

· It's Watchmen VJ-Day Eve!

• Warners, Fox settle over 'Watchmen' [THR]

Numerous reports noted a hearing scheduled today for 3:30 — a day after the studios filed a notice of settlement status that presumably detailed the texture, dimensions and flavor of the pound of flesh Fox would be extracting from Warner's. THR now writes that the hearing has been delayed until Friday morning at 9:30, "at which point the parties will announce they have settled the case." And all will be right at last with the fanboy universe, at least until some imminent Dark Knight Oscar snub next Tuesday reignites their pants-wetting ire. Be prepared.

• WatchmenWatch: Settlement status report filed [THR Esq.]